My Secret

Not long after Ryan's adoption was finalized, I told my sister and she was and still is wonderful.  Her and Greg have met Ryan and his parents and are super supportive.  With my sister I feel safe.  Her life has not been perfect and has made choices that she may or may not regret, but I have never judged her, because it is her life, not mine, and she is the same with me.

However, I have many relatives that are not so loving and supportive.  My mom's siblings and her mother were never told about Ryan.  I really don't believe that my grandma would have taken the news badly, but by telling her, my aunts and uncles would have found out, and it would have destroyed any relationship that we had.  Even when my aune D. was adopting foster children, we (my mom and I) didn't dare say a word, because she is so judgemental and hateful that it just was better to keep our mouths shut.

Two years ago my grandma passed away, never knowing her great-grand child, and it still haunts me to this day.  As it turned out, our horrible family turned on my mom and I and my cousin Jackie while my grandma was dying in the hospital and we have not spoken to them since.  I still cannot fathom the amount of anger that they carried for my mom and I.  I don't understand how family can treat each other with such hatred.  My poor cousin had to end up calling the police on her own father because he was threatening to kill me and her.  It was horrible.  I am just so glad that my grandma didn't have to see how her children were acting.  I have relived that night over and over in my head a million times, wondering what I could have done differently to make things better, but because I did nothing to instigate the situation, nothing I could have done, or not done would have changed a thing.

When we drove out of Lincoln, Nebraska, we knew that we would never have a reason to return, because we no longer had any family there.  In essence, when my grandma died, so did the rest of my family.